Lex Irnitana
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The lex Irnitana consists of fragments of Roman municipal laws dated to AD 91 which had been inscribed on a collection of six bronze tablets found in 1981 near El Saucejo, Spain.[1][2] Together with the Lex Salpensana and the Lex Malacitana it provides the most complete[1] version of the lex Flavia municipalis, or the Flavian municipal law.[1][2] and has allowed new insights into the workings of Roman law.[3] The tablets are exhibited in the Archeological Museum of Seville.[1] Since the tablets provide the only surviving copy of large parts of the Flavian municipal law, they have provided new insights into the procedural side of municipal courts.[4]
The tablets measure 57.5 by 91.5 cm (22.6 by 36.0 in)[1] and each has three holes at the top and bottom to fix them to the facade of an official building at a height where it could easily be read, as expressly required by article 95. In total they must have stretched some 9 m (30 ft) like an unrolled volumen.[2] The letters measure 4–6 mm (0.16–0.24 in) in height and the text is framed by a simple molding.
The six surviving tablets are engraved III, V, VII, VIII, IX and X.[1][2] Fragments of tablet II have later been discovered.[1] A sanctio, a legal endorsement, on tablet X shows that it is the last tablet.[2] The plates each consist of three columns of text which survives largely intact. It contains 96 articles (rubricae), an addendum and a letter from Domitian.[1][2] The articles are not numbered but marked by Rubrica followed by a short description. Correlating the Lex Irnitana with other finds, it is possible to reconstruct most of the original numbering except for twelve sections at the end of tablet V.[2]
Dating
The letter which is included at the end provides two dates for the text: Litterae datae IIII idus Apriles Circeis recitatae V idus Domitianas, which dates the letter to the 10th of April and its (public) reading to the 11th of the month Domitian (October)[2] both in the year that Manius Acilius Glabrio and Marcus Ulpius Traianus were consuls (AD 91) and is consistent with the granting of Latin Rights to Baetica in 73/74[5] and the original text of the document must have been composed somewhere in between using fragments of existing provisions in older laws from Augustean and even Republican times.[5] The addendum is written in a smaller script than the rest of the text and is thought to have been added in the second or third century.[5]